So Cassius, would the tl;dr version of that be, "software, not hardware"?

I would like to hear more of your opinion on the following:

Originally Posted by Cassius

And, for what it's worth, I actually prefer the cheap disposable aluminum magazines to the heavy as **** steel H&K mags or the chintzy magpul ones. I know a lot of other people that do as well.

I recently picked up a AR and have been adding a couple things to it to make it fit my needs better. One of the first things I did was buy a Magpul magazine because I thought the aluminum mags I got with it felt flimsy as hell.

Dental pick OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER again, immersing the firearm in water and then not drying it properly, using products that aren't meant for firearms (like shaving cream) to clean them, sandpaper . . . anything to get the carbon out.

Privates are stupid, what can I say?

On the other hand, it's mainly the fault of a lot of military units that enforce an unreasonable standard of cleanliness. The Army standard for "clean" means no carbon and completely dry. Anyone that has ever owned a firearm knows that you store weapons with a light coat of lubrication to keep them from rusting.

"No. Listen to me because I know what I'm talking about here." -- Hannibal

I bet none of you have tried to carry 400 7.62mm + Magazines, in addition to another 400 in link for GPMG as part of your daily load.

I'm fairly glad of 5.56mm to be honest.

Here here!
Also, Cassius made some fine points.

The only thing I will add, is that I read a few studies done post WW2, and here, studies post the 73' war. These studies led to the transition to smaller caliber rounds.
The main conclusions from those studies, was that what won firefights was the volume of fire much more than the accuracy, thus the decision to change from big-ass rounds, few mags with few bullets in them, to smaller caliber, more ammo on the soldier for the same amount of weight, which made sense to me, as I had to shlep that **** around.

BTW
I read somewhere (doubt it's official or true) that Delta still carries 1911 as their sidearms, that my friend, as you know, is no tiny handgun.

The thing that people don't take into consideration with the Spec Ops community is that while they have large budgets, they're still not unlimited, and ammunition is pretty expensive if you shoot a lot. So it makes sense to use weapons that are chambered in the same caliber as the rest of the military because then most of your ammo budget is taken care of by the regular military.

"No. Listen to me because I know what I'm talking about here." -- Hannibal

Dental pick OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER again, immersing the firearm in water and then not drying it properly, using products that aren't meant for firearms (like shaving cream) to clean them, sandpaper . . . anything to get the carbon out.

Privates are stupid, what can I say?

WFT!?!?! In a truly desperate situation, I could imagine using gasoline (solvent) and motor oil (lubricant) as a field expedient alternative to high end gun products, but shaving cream? What is that even supposed to do?

WFT!?!?! In a truly desperate situation, I could imagine using gasoline (solvent) and motor oil (lubricant) as a field expedient alternative to high end gun products, but shaving cream? What is that even supposed to do?

That's the worst part. They don't do this in the field. They do it at home to save themselves the trouble of cleaning a weapon properly, because unscented shaving cream supposedly will dry a weapon out and pull all the carbon out of the metal. I have no idea if this is true or not, but it is a very popular rumor.

What can tell you is that when people do it and then don't immediately clean it all out, it fucks the weapon up pretty badly. We just had to turn in a 240 that was green on the inside due to some shaving cream treatment that a couple privates tried to do to it. Which is hilarious, since they probably walked right past the solvent tank on the way out the door to buy the shaving cream.

"No. Listen to me because I know what I'm talking about here." -- Hannibal